THE ALLURE OF THE VENEER195are piled on the floor, and some others appear in three-dimensional
form, as taxidermy mounts. The flat skins more readily propose a prob-
lematic, aesthetic affinity with other two-dimensional objects situated on
walls: newspaper clippings, maps, photographs; the mounted skins place
the animal-made object in a different relation to the three- dimensional
objects that surround them. What ethical dimension applies to this alluded
ontological fluidity?
There is a peculiar parallelism between the notion that objects are in-
accessible and infinitely withdrawn and the first wave of human/animal
studies critiques of animal inaccessibility: the claim that animals con-
stantly withdraw. They withdraw in the sense that we can never access their
thinking, their being. Animals also withdraw from other animals, plants,
stones, and environments in the sense that they inescapably collide with
them but simultaneously never fully disclose their deeper intentions, and
neither do they usually seem to unveil their nature to one another. Ani-
mals withdraw as formal entities, and as bodies in space they maintain an
elusive attitude toward humans. Zoos, aquariums, photography, and film
are visibility devices that condemn the animal body to the full visibility of
present-at-hand and therefore aim to counterbalance their tendency to
withdraw. Historically, the visibility imposed on physicality is erroneously
mistaken for a deeper level of connection with the animal. So, how does
the speculative dimension of Agrimiká assist us in considering the pro-
ductivities at stake in Harman’s object-oriented ontology when animals
or animal-made objects are involved in the equation?
Bruno Latour’s interest in things has substantially informed Harman’s
revisionism of metaphysics. His conception of an “object-oriented soci-
ology for object-oriented humans” that he elaborates in Reassembling the
Social (2005) provides an important notion of how we might build on object-
oriented ontology’s flat approach.^5 Latour argued that “to be accounted
for, objects have to enter into accounts. If no trace is produced, they offer
no information to the observer and will have no visible effect on other
agents.”^6
I have found myself wondering why the animal skins and the taxi-
dermy mounts in Agrimiká constitute the most charged and vibrant ob-
jects on display—but finding a definitive answer has not been easy. To
state that the animal skins testify to the undeniable deaths of animals
simply does not seem to suffice, for this positioning would dismiss the